Leeds's city-centre postcode, LS1, sold nothing but flats in 2025 — all 50 recorded sales. Its 2025 median price was £191,250. Travel south to Cambridge's CB1, where only 21.8% of sales were flats, and the median was £490,000 — more than two and a half times higher. If flat share predicted price, these two postcodes would sit at opposite ends of the ranking in the same order either way. They don't. Across all 29 city-centre postcodes we tested, how flat-dominated a centre is tells you almost nothing about how expensive it is.
This builds on our earlier ranking of flat share in these same 29 city centres, which found a vast range — from 100% flats in Leeds down to 4.1% in Middlesbrough — without reporting price. Here we add the missing half: the 2025 median sale price for every one of those same postcodes, drawn from HM Land Registry Price Paid data and fetched on 17 October 2026.
The 29 city centres, ranked by price
"Houses" combines detached, semi-detached and terraced sales; medians cover all property types sold in each postcode district in 2025 (category A, full market value transactions, n ≥ 50 in every row).
| Rank | City | Postcode district | 2025 median price | 2025 sales | Flat share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cambridge | CB1 | £490,000 | 587 | 21.8% |
| 2 | Oxford | OX1 | £485,000 | 184 | 30.4% |
| 3 | Bath | BA1 | £480,000 | 696 | 34.5% |
| 4 | Reading | RG1 | £302,000 | 563 | 41.2% |
| 5 | Bristol | BS1 | £290,000 | 207 | 94.7% |
| 6 | York | YO1 | £288,000 | 98 | 65.3% |
| 7 | Exeter | EX4 | £285,000 | 641 | 16.1% |
| 8 | Manchester | M1 | £245,000 | 181 | 98.3% |
| 9 | Birmingham | B1 | £235,000 | 179 | 98.9% |
| 10 | Portsmouth | PO1 | £222,500 | 235 | 34.9% |
| 11 | Norwich | NR1 | £218,000 | 467 | 45.2% |
| 12 | Southampton | SO14 | £215,000 | 269 | 64.3% |
| 13 | Leeds | LS1 | £191,250 | 50 | 100.0% |
| 14 | Plymouth | PL1 | £185,000 | 332 | 65.4% |
| 15 | Wolverhampton | WV1 | £180,000 | 83 | 22.9% |
| 16 | Cardiff | CF10 | £178,500 | 222 | 87.4% |
| 17 | Derby | DE1 | £165,000 | 166 | 45.2% |
| 18 | Coventry | CV1 | £158,000 | 138 | 29.7% |
| 18 | Preston | PR1 | £158,000 | 758 | 10.8% |
| 20 | Newcastle | NE1 | £150,000 | 70 | 98.6% |
| 20 | Liverpool | L1 | £150,000 | 216 | 98.1% |
| 20 | Nottingham | NG1 | £150,000 | 83 | 88.0% |
| 23 | Swansea | SA1 | £145,000 | 524 | 19.1% |
| 24 | Hull | HU1 | £140,000 | 57 | 64.9% |
| 25 | Stoke-on-Trent | ST1 | £130,000 | 358 | 6.4% |
| 26 | Sheffield | S1 | £129,500 | 72 | 84.7% |
| 27 | Leicester | LE1 | £126,250 | 56 | 91.1% |
| 28 | Bradford | BD1 | £112,000 | 51 | 78.4% |
| 29 | Middlesbrough | TS1 | £73,500 | 122 | 4.1% |
Every row clears Homecost's usual sample-size guard (n ≥ 30); the smallest is Leeds at 50 sales.
A weak relationship, not a strong one
Running the two columns against each other across all 29 cities gives a Pearson correlation of -0.19 — a weak negative relationship, nowhere near strong enough to call flat share a price driver. For comparison, a correlation of 0 means no relationship at all; -0.19 sits closer to "no relationship" than to anything meaningfully negative.
The top five most expensive centres — Cambridge, Oxford, Bath, Reading and Bristol — average 44.5% flats between them. The five cheapest — Middlesbrough, Bradford, Leicester, Sheffield and Stoke-on-Trent — average 54.0%. That is barely a gap, and it runs in the opposite direction from what a simple "flats are cheaper than houses, so flat-heavy centres should be cheaper" theory would predict. Nearly-all-flat Manchester (98.3% flats, £245,000) and Birmingham (98.9%, £235,000) sit comfortably mid-table, well above mostly-house Middlesbrough (4.1% flats, £73,500) and above flat-light Swansea (19.1%, £145,000) and Stoke-on-Trent (6.4%, £130,000) too.
What the price gap looks like instead
The four most expensive centres — Cambridge, Oxford, Bath and Reading — are also four of the smallest sample sizes relative to their city's overall size, and three of the four (Cambridge, Oxford, Bath) are long-established university or heritage cities in southern England with limited scope for new building inside a historic core. Reading, just west of London, sits inside the capital's commuter belt. None of the four has an unusually high or low flat share — their prices look driven by location and planning constraints on supply, not by what type of home is sold there.
At the other end, Middlesbrough (£73,500, 4.1% flats), Bradford (£112,000, 78.4% flats) and Leicester (£126,250, 91.1% flats) span almost the full range of flat shares while landing in similar price territory — further evidence that regional economic geography, not property-type mix, is doing most of the work. This echoes a pattern we've found elsewhere on Homecost: a factor that cleanly explains one outcome (here, the make-up of what's for sale) doesn't automatically explain a different one (what it sells for).
Why this matters if you're comparing cities
A city-centre postcode with a 100% flat share, like Leeds's LS1, is not a signal of either a premium or a discount — the local flat market there happens to be comparatively affordable. A low flat share, like Cambridge's CB1, isn't a discount signal either; houses there are rare and expensive. The practical takeaway is that "what proportion of this postcode is flats" and "what will I pay here" need separate answers — pulling one from Land Registry data on the type mix, the other from median prices for the specific postcode.
The cost gap between the two ends of this table carries through to stamp duty and monthly mortgage costs. At Cambridge's £490,000 CB1 median, a standard home-mover purchase in England currently attracts £14,500 in Stamp Duty Land Tax (2.96% effective rate); at Middlesbrough's £73,500 TS1 median, the bill is £0, since the whole price sits inside the nil-rate band. On a 75% loan-to-value, 25-year mortgage at the Bank of England's current quoted 5-year fixed rate of 4.32%, the Cambridge purchase works out to roughly £2,005 a month before council tax, energy or insurance; the Middlesbrough purchase to around £301 a month. Figures like these are general information, not advice — a mortgage broker or conveyancer can confirm what applies to a specific purchase, deposit and credit profile.
Homecost's postcode tool breaks this down for any UK address, combining the Land Registry sale history with current stamp duty, council tax and mortgage-rate figures. Try it on a flat in Leeds's LS1, the most flat-dominated — and one of the more affordable — city centres in this table.
For a price-only ranking of flats specifically across five major cities, see the cheapest way into a UK city centre. The type-mix side of this story — which cities sell almost nothing but flats in their centres — is covered in full in the companion piece linked near the top of this article. More city and regional breakdowns are in our market analysis section.